Antal Fekete: One hundred years of legal tender laws

A century of legal tender laws has been a century of war, unemployment, and coercion, Antal Fekete remarks in an address given this week in Aukland, New Zealand, and posted tonight at GoldSeek. Without legal tender laws -- laws requiring acceptance of government-issued and irredeemable currency -- great wars would not be possible, Fekete argues, because the people of war-waging countries would be bankrupted in advance rather than by degrees afterward. But legal tender laws give governments near-absolute power, which they won't give up easily. Such laws are the prerequisite for what U.S. Rep. Ron Paul calls "the welfare-warfare state."

GATA is not as much in the economic philosophy business as Fekete but you don't have to agree with his every prescription to appreciate his diagnosis, which is in large part an explanation of why governments should hate gold so and want to strangle it.

Fekete's address is headlined "Forgotten Anniversary: One Hundred Years of Legal Tender" and you can find it at GoldSeek here: